The long-promised campaign mode for Terraforming Mars has arrived, well, nearly. The Legacy of Mars has just turned up as a preview on Gamefound, with rather limited information available so far.
The blurb on the page informs us that: ‘In Terraforming Mars: The Legacy of Mars, players are corporations taking part in [Mars] terraforming, through playing project cards, placing tiles on the board, and managing their resources. Over a number of missions, players have the opportunity to develop their corporation and gain new abilities. The best players of each mission gain title of Governor, Administrator, and Prefect, which gives Title Points (TP) to the campaign.’
The first part of that is pretty much a single-sentence summary of the original Terraforming Mars, but the development of corporations certainly sounds interesting.
However, some people seem vocally upset at what comes next: ‘The Legacy of Mars is a fully replayable campaign divided into two parts. On this campaign we launch Part 1 covering missions 1-4. Part 2 contains missions 5-7 and will be launched in a separate campaign scheduled for late 2026.’
Let’s get the good out of the way first: the game is replayable – there will be no destruction or permanent marking of the game. Well, I think that’s good, but one Gamefound commenter notes that this makes it more of an expansion than a campaign mode, but personally I prefer not to destroy games when I play them.
What is really riling folk is that the current Gamefound campaign is, as more than one commenter notes, ‘only half a game.’ (Some of the comments are entertaining in their, um, intensity.) I can kind of see their point, but I also wonder what makes a campaign – oh, that word’s annoying, meaning both Legacy of Mars campaign and Gamefound campaign, which is half a Legacy of Mars campaign – I mean, what makes a game campaign? You play the ‘base game’ but instead of starting afresh next time, you remember some state from previous plays such that you’re not starting from scratch, and there may be secret cards, etc. that are only available on these subsequent plays. That’s all fine and dandy, but what determines the ending? Is it when you run out of stuff in the box, or when you run out of stuff in two boxes? And whichever it is, surely the winner is determined merely by totting up points gained over the games up until that point.
In other words, did Stronghold Games cock things up by describing this as the first four parts of a seven game campaign, when they could have described it as all four parts of a four game one? (And then give people the surprise of a new three or four part campaign next year.) People are also expressing concern about the as yet unannounced price, worried about having to pay twice to get the complete game—twice something unknown is still something unknown. Maybe I’m just being too naïve.
Regardless of the furore, I do think this is a project to keep an eye on if you’re a Terraforming Mars fan, if only for the ‘new mechanics and hundreds of new cards to explore.’ Definitely don’t make rash decisions about it until at least some more information is forthcoming.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
